Wild Berry Season in BC: What's Ripe and When
Wild berry season in British Columbia runs from roughly June through September, and it moves in a predictable order: salmonberries and wild strawberries first in early summer, then thimbleberries, blackcaps, and saskatoons through July, then the big August wave of huckleberries, wild blueberries, and blackberries, finishing with the tart late berries into September. If you want to pick, the rule is simple. Follow the ripening up in elevation and along the calendar, start low and coastal in June, and chase it into the mountains by late August.
That order is the useful thing to hold in your head, because it tells you where to be and when. Down at sea level and in the valleys, berries ripen weeks earlier than they do up at elevation. So a good (ie. prolific) berry picker does not think about one berry season. They think about a rolling season that climbs the hills all summer, and they follow it. Quite honestly, this is how I view almost all foraging. If it’s past its prime in one spot, I go up in elevation, or down if my spot isn’t quite ready.
Early summer: salmonberry and wild strawberry (June into July)
Salmonberry is the one that kicks it off on the coast. It looks like a big soft raspberry in colours from yellow-orange to deep red, growing on tall canes in damp, shady, forest-edge spots. The flavour is mild and can be a bit watery compared to a raspberry, and people argue about it, but early in the season, warm off the cane, it is a genuine treat. I have picked them off the tiniest bushes on a remote fishing trip when the power went out in the cabin and we were foraging for anything green or edible, and in that moment they were the best thing going.
Wild strawberries come on around the same time, and they are the opposite of salmonberry: tiny, and almost absurdly intense. A wild strawberry is a fraction of the size of the grocery kind and carries ten times the flavour. Picking them is slow, on your hands and knees, and it is one of my oldest and happiest food memories from summers on my grandparents' farm. You will never gather enough to preserve. You eat them on the spot, which is the whole point.
Mid summer: thimbleberry, blackcap, saskatoon (July)
Thimbleberry ripens through July and is easy to know: a soft, wide, shallow red berry that sits like a little thimble on the bush, growing on canes with big, soft, maple-shaped leaves and no thorns. It is delicate to the point of falling apart in your hand, so it almost never makes it to a store. That is exactly why it is worth knowing. It is a forager's berry. Their flavour varies quite a bit from bush to bush. When they are good, they are very good.
Blackcap raspberries, the wild black raspberry, come on in July too, on arching thorny canes. They look like a black raspberry because that is what they are, and they make some of the best wild jam and syrup you will taste.
Saskatoon berries, in the drier Interior, ripen from late June into July. They look like a blueberry but grow on a tall shrub or small tree, and the flavour has an almond, cherry note from the seeds inside. Saskatoons are a Prairie and Interior staple for good reason. They dry well, freeze well, and bake into everything.
The August wave: huckleberry, wild blueberry, blackberry
August is the big month, and huckleberry is the crown of it. Black or mountain huckleberries ripen up at elevation from August into September, which is why you follow them uphill as the summer burns off. They look like a dark blueberry but grow wild on the mountainsides, and the flavour is deeper and wilder than any cultivated blueberry. This is also prime bear country in prime bear season, so pick with your head up, make noise, and know that you are sharing the patch.
Wild blueberries ripen in bogs and open ground through August as well, lower and often earlier than mountain huckleberry, smaller and more intense than the farmed berry. I’ve often found blueberries holding on for dear life in Northern parts of BC well into moose hunting season, so make sure to keep an eye out for trail side snacks during the mid day lull.
Blackberries close out the wave. On the coast, the big invasive Himalayan blackberry takes over roadsides, fields, and lanes from August into September, thorny and generous and everywhere. The native trailing blackberry is smaller, earlier, lower to the ground, and many people swear it is the better berry. I’m sorry to report, this is one case where I prefer the introduced berry to our wild, native counterpart. Either way, late summer is blackberry time, and it is the easiest big-volume pick most of us have access to.
What I actually do with a haul
Between smoothies, muffins, frozen berry slushies and the odd winter desert, we go through a considerable amount of berries each year. This is how I handle them, what I preserve and what I enjoy fresh.
Eat the delicate ones fresh. Wild strawberries, thimbleberries, warm salmonberries. These do not keep and they do not need to. Eat as much as you can (keeping in mind good ethics of harvesting) and remember how good they are when you stare at those sad expensive berries in the grocery store in January. Spend the rest of the year in eager anticipation of the next berry season.
Every year we pick as many red huckleberries as we can to make the tiniest jar of jam as a birthday present for one particular family member. This person knows that the teeny weenie jar of jam is precious because of the incredible amount of work to pick that quantity of berries but even more so, because we all somehow restrained ourselves enough to not eat them before we get home!
Freeze the rest the smart way. Spread berries in a single layer on a tray, freeze them hard, then bag them. Frozen loose like that, they pour out one at a time instead of clumping into a brick, and they are ready for a winter morning's pancakes or a pie in December. Blackberries and blueberries are made for this.
Cook the big hauls into jam, syrup, or the freezer. I will often take berries and pour sugar and bourbon over them. By Christmas, they are always a surprise because I typically forget I’ve done it and are amazing in cocktails in front of the fire. When August blackberries come in by the flat, a batch of jam and a bottle of syrup put summer on the shelf for the year. And you do not have to make jam. A quick berry sauce simmered down with a little sugar and frozen in jars goes on yogurt, ice cream, and wild game all winter. Jesse Griffiths makes a berry cobbler for his birthday every year, and honestly that is the whole philosophy in one dish: pick the berries, bake something warm, share it
Picking with sense, and sharing the patch
A few things I hold to, so the berries keep coming back.
- Only pick from clean ground. Skip roadside berries where the plants get dust, exhaust, and possibly spray, and skip anywhere that might have been treated. Train tracks are great places to find blackberry bushes, but I would not pick anywhere near them due to the excessive chemicals sprayed there.
- Take some, leave lots. The birds, the bears, and next year's plants all depend on the same fruit. There is always more than you can carry, so there is no reason to strip a bush.
- In the mountains in August, respect that you are in bear season and bear habitat. Berries are exactly what they are eating to fatten up for winter. Noise, awareness, and a little humility keep everyone happy.
- Wash everything before it goes in the freezer or the pot.
The season is a moving target, so start now
The dates in this piece are a guide, not a promise. Every year runs early or late depending on the winter, the snowpack, and the rain, and a patch that was loaded last August can be thin this one. That is not a problem to solve. That is the whole nature of wild food. It changes, so you pay attention, you scout, and you go when it is ready rather than when the calendar says so.
So this is your reminder to get out there. Right now, somewhere below you, something is ripe, and in three weeks it will be ripe a thousand feet higher up. Follow it up the hill all summer and you can pick wild berries in BC for months. Fill the freezer while you can. Come January, a pancake studded with huckleberries you picked yourself is the best kind of time travel there is.
